Investigation into Mercer Island teacher’s resignation finds history of alleged abuse

A well-regarded Mercer Island High School teacher, Gary “Chris” Twombley, resigned his position earlier this year amid allegations of inappropriate and abusive relationships with some of his students.

Moe K. Clark is an investigative reporter at InvestigateWest. She wrote about what happened, in collaboration with Andy Nystrom at the Mercer Island Reporter. Clark told KUOW’s Paige Browning about the investigation.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Paige Browning: Allegations against Mr. Twombley first came to light nine years ago, in 2016. Tell us what happened then.

Moe K. Clark: In early 2016, Mercer Island High School administrators got a call from an anonymous employee at Microsoft. The woman expressed concerns that a student she was mentoring was in an inappropriate relationship with her teacher, Twombley. The anonymous caller said she had seen text messages between the two, and it seemed to be quite inappropriate for a student and a teacher.

Did the district take action at the time?

From the documents we got and reviewed, it seemed like the administrators repeatedly brushed off the call. One of the administrators told the school resource officer, who was trying to look into this, that she thought it was a prank, and that they didn't have enough evidence to investigate further, and that they didn't want to rile up this teacher without any evidence.

You wrote that Twombley was a beloved teacher. What was he teaching and how did students perceive him? I partly asked this to highlight what power dynamics might have been at play in his interactions.

Twombley was a long time English teacher at the school. He also was the advisor for the student newspaper and coached the track and field team for many years. He was extremely well regarded at the high school. It seems every person I talked to talked about how beloved he was at the high school. There's been a lot of shock that these allegations were made against him, because he was so well liked. To your point about the power dynamics at play, this is not uncommon for cases like this, for the teacher to be really well regarded, and therefore allegations can be sort of brushed off more easily.

So, in 2016 this allegation comes out. Twombley continues to teach. What happened next?

In December 2023, a different student than the one that the anonymous tip was about came forward. She said, during that same time, during that same school year, she had been in a relationship with Twombley, when she was a minor. After she made the report to police, the teacher was quickly put on paid administrative leave while law enforcement looked into the allegations.

This time it was taken more seriously. The police report was filed. What happened from there?

The officer that conducted the investigation recommended that charges be filed against Twombley, given the severity of the things the victim had shared. The case went to the King County Prosecutor's office. They said it was beyond a reasonable doubt that the misconduct and abuse had occurred. They didn't press charges because the statute of limitations had expired. It had been too many years since the incident had happened, and so they couldn't press charges. And just to note, the statute of limitations law changed in 2019. You can report sexual abuse at any time now. But at the time her abuse had occurred, in 2015-16, it was a three-year statute.

What has Twombley said about the allegations?

I wasn't able to reach Twombley. I emailed him a few times. He deleted his LinkedIn the same day I reached out. But before this victim went to police, he had emailed her and said he wanted to talk to her. He said he had caused her great harm. When police were doing their investigation, he declined to give a statement. He had retained a lawyer and said no to being interviewed by police, so he hasn't said anything publicly about the allegations against him.

What repercussions did he face as far as teaching again?

As part of the settlement agreement with the school district, he agreed to voluntarily revoke his Washington teaching license. That likely means his name is in a nationwide database, and it would be more challenging for him to be recertified in a different state, but it's not impossible. He also could work with youth in other capacities that don't require a teaching certificate.

Your reporting highlights what seemed to be systemic failures to address what was going on at Mercer Island High School. How do you understand that? Was it a cover up?

The school district never publicly announced anything about Twombley or why he had resigned. They hadn't notified the public to see if there were victims in addition to the two they had known about. It was really clear from the documents that the school board and the district did not want this information getting out. They have continuously said they were trying to respect the wishes of the victim. She didn't want to be in the public spotlight. She didn't want to be re-traumatized by this case.

But it's also pretty clear that the school district didn't want a scandal. The way they tried to keep this information out of the public eye, I don't know if I would call it a cover up, but they did work very hard to keep this information quiet.

You told our producer you looked into how common incidents like this are around Washington state. What did you find about that?

I was pretty shocked to see how common cases like this are. I cover criminal justice topics, so education issues are kind of outside of my normal reporting. There was a very similar case out of Bothell a few years ago, another case in Vancouver, and two teachers a few years ago on Vashon Island. Looking through the state's licensing database, I came across a few others in the last two years that were never publicized but were very similar to the case that I looked at. So, I was shocked to find that it is not that uncommon, unfortunately.

Listen to the interview by clicking the play button above.